EA SPORTS will be releasing its inaugural UFC video game title later this year.

While many of the details regarding the game are still very much unavailable to the general public, MMAjunkie recently had the chance to sit down for some hands on time with the new game, which is expected to release on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 later this year.

After revealing the process of what it takes to build the first truly next-generation sports title, an exclusive question and answer session with Creative Director Brian Hayes and Lead Producer Nate McDonald took place to dig into some of the finer details of the upcoming title.

Here are the highlights of MMAjunkie’s Q&A with the “EA Sports UFC” developers.

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The majority of people who currently own a video game console have an Xbox 360 or PS3. Why is this game only planned for Xbox One and PS4, or are there intentions to bring it to current-generation platforms?
The day that we signed the deal there may have been discussions of where we’re going to make the game. Very shortly after that it was decided it would be a next-gen only. The investment to make a current-gen game as well wasn’t really worth it. FIFA, Madden and NHL, it’s easy for all of them to update those products. We would have been doing all that stuff for current-gen and then probably have never made another version of that ever again. It would have split our focus and we wanted to make sure we focused on this and having the team not having to split.

What is the roster going to look like? How many male and female fighters will be playable in the game?
We are still locking that down because there’s always a chance something can change and a guy can get booted off the roster, but it’s going to be in the neighborhood of 100. There’s no final number yet until we get to the point where we tell the UFC we can’t take any more guys.

What was the process in distributing fighter ratings? How do you decide who gets what statistics?
For fighter’s statistics, one of the first things we did was actually send the roster to [UFC matchmakers] Joe Silva and Sean Shelby. We gave them the roster and all the categories for each rating and they gave it a first pass. Then after that we took it and tweaked it. After the first pass everyone came back pretty much rated like 89 or higher [out of 100]. So we sent it back and told them we need a little more separation between the guys. Then after that we spread it out a little bit. It was nice to have it off our plate, because if a fighter gets mad we can just point them in their direction.

Will those fighter statistics be updated from event to event like in other sports games?
There’s not a dynamic, automated roster and statistics update system at this time. You look at games like NBA, FIFA, Madden and they have like a daily update because on any given night there might be four to 10 NBA games. For us, it’s maybe every two weeks where 20 fighters will fight. So we’ll probably be updating the stuff on our own servers as frequently as possible.

What about downloadable fighters? If a new fighter enters the UFC and makes a big impact, will fans be able to download that fighter and use them in the game?
We’re definitely looking at adding fighters to the roster if and when it’s possible. It’s part of our plan at the moment and there’s no reason why that should change.

Going off of that, a major feature people enjoyed in “EA Sports MMA” was the ability to create a fighter and share them online. Will the fighter share option be brought back for this upcoming title?
That’s something we loved as well, but we can’t do it anymore for a number of reasons. One of the big things people did on a game like “Fight Night” is making Rocky Balboa, or Floyd Mayweather or whatever. But nowadays when people can make YouTube clips and share them, there’s this whole grey area where if our game allows users to make a Rocky character that’s the intellectual property of somebody else, it causes a ton of problems. There is a “Create-A-Fighter” and you could create you own Rocky, but when we are facilitating the sharing of content, it gets very difficult.

Speaking of likeness rights when it comes to creating fighters, there was an issue that arose in “UFC Undisputed” when it came to fighter tattoos. One of Carlos Condit’s tattoo artists tried to file a lawsuit over the use of his design in the game. How do you avoid similar issues?
We’ve sent out waivers to all the fighters for them to sign contracts saying it’s OK to display those trademarks or other likenesses. Anything that’s trademarked, like Ronda Rousey’s Olympic rings for example, we had to take those out because those are trademarks we can’t get away with. We’re trying to be as authentic as we can with all the tattoos, but it does get pretty complicated.

In “UFC Undisputed 3″ there was a glitch that allowed users to create cross-division fights. People seemed to greatly enjoy having a heavyweight fight a bantamweight. Have you explored the option of cross-division fights?
When we used to makes games on the PS2, the characters looked good for then, but it was a lot easier to make something like having a flyweight fight a heavyweight cause the realisms and physical connections were not there. Now when we do it, you can’t have Roy Nelson take down Demetrious Johnson because the physics of the simulation don’t work. Perhaps some day down the road we will come up with some technical way to make it look awesome.

Right now we only have a bunch of guys in multiple weight divisions. Any guy that’s fought – or it would be realistic to fight in another weight class – we put them in multiple divisions. Daniel Cormier is heavyweight and light heavyweight. Dan Henderson is light heavyweight and middleweight. B.J. Penn is actually in three divisions now.

Can a fighter’s attire be changed from fight to fight? And if so, how much freedom is there to toggle what your favorite athlete wears inside the octagon?
We might look at attire updates. There’s a challenge with fighter sponsorships and all that stuff. With all the new technologies like game DVR, the ability to share videos and all that make for some crazy challenges. If someone puts Jon Jones in something that’s not Nike and makes a video of it, that can’t be done. We pretty much have to lock them to their brands and that’ll be it.

Will illegal blows be included in the game? Can you poke an opponent in the eye, kick them in the groin, or possibly even grab the fence to avoid a takedown?
We knew if we were going to put that in, we’d all need some kind of penalty. It’s similar to “Fight Night” when we used to have illegal blows. You could punch a guy in the nuts or head-butt him, and we had a really elaborate penalty system. There are no low blows in this game. Physics might make it look like something strays low, but there’s none of that in this game. No eye pokes. Nobody is going to have to deal with it or have a fight stopped because of it.

What about cut stoppages? In “UFC Undisputed” there were very rarely stoppages due to cuts, but occasionally the referee would at least break of the action and call the doctor to check on a cut. Where does the new game stand when it comes to cut stoppages?
Cuts can get visually very bad, but we don’t have any cut stoppages. In the future, especially for cut stoppages, until we can make it so the players has the ability to stop cuts, we don’t want people to lose because of them. Maybe in the future we’ll have a mini-game like they used to do for “Fight Night.”

What kind of venues will be available in the game? Part of what makes the UFC so unique is the fact they travel all across the globe, so how have you incorporated that into the game in terms of fight environments?
Including the gym environment, we have about 12 or 13. For some places it’s easy to get the licensing because we have relationships with arenas from the past for other sports titles. But ones that we don’t have pre-existing relationships with it has proven to be a bit of a challenge. I won’t get into specifics, but there have been a couple where it was months of back and forth and because of some legal mumbo-jumbo we weren’t able to get it done. We were able to swap in for another venue. We went through the list of venues with the UFC and we went after those as our priority. Staples Center is in there, the Honda Center, Bell Centre in Montreal, Air Canada Centre in Toronto, the Rio Arena in Brazil and the MGM Grand in Vegas. We’ve got a good range.”

What is the process of building commentary for the game? With the UFC having multiple broadcast teams and more popping up as events increase, will we see more than one team in the game?
The one commentary team (of Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan) is all we could handle from a bandwidth standpoint, but adding a second commentary team is something we might look at in the future. We pulled stuff from the live broadcasts and had them come in and do some voiceover work. Joe Rogan is a really busy guy, so it was really challenging to get time with him. But we did get time with him and Goldberg, and then we were able to take samples from UFC broadcasts and all that.

In terms of game play, how did you create a submission system for the game? Striking has had a lot of precedent in the video game world, but there isn’t much out there to build off when it comes to creating a grappling system. Explain how you went about creating a submission system for “EA SPORTS UFC.”
The submission battle system is all-new. Obviously this is a big one people are curious about and it’s a huge part of MMA. Everybody would love if you could make the submission system like Brazilian jiu-jitsu and you could play without putting some abstract thing on the HUD or the screen. From experience, probably about 10 of our game animation guys have been training BJJ for the past two years, some longer. We’ve learned that you can do BJJ with your eyes closed. I don’t need my eyes open and I can tell where you’re trying to move your hips, your weight, balance, leverage – all that stuff. So you have a sport you can do with you eye closed and we have a video game where we can only give you information through your eyes. It’s a big challenge.

I would love to make some hardware that you could put on your head and you feel everything, but until we get to something like that, we will be somewhat limited about how we can implement BJJ into the game. That being said, we did want to bring more to the BJJ game in this new UFC. We didn’t want to make it, “Hey, we’re on the ground, I’m going to hit a button for a submission and we will have a battle.” Our submission game is based on the principal that if you get me in a submission hold, I’m trying to get out anyway I can while you’re trying to advance. In BJJ there’s a lot of steps to make sure you put on a submission hold correctly. If you’re putting on an armbar there is all these little techniques that are important to make sure you’re not giving the guy an opportunity to find a way out the back door. On defense we said you’re not going to cooperate with a submission hold. You’re always going to try to figure out where’s the door, where’s the window, where’s the hatch to the basement – whatever it is. How do I get out of this trap I’m in? Then offensively, my responsibility is to make sure I don’t let you get out, then when it’s the right time, take my submission hold a little further.

There’s four ways to go when you’re in a submission. There’s four ways a defender can go. He just has to push the right stick in any direction and if it goes all the way outside, he gets the submission. That’s the only thing you have to do on defense. Push the right stick in the direction you want out, you escape the submission. The offensive guy, if he sees you going to the left, he just has to push the right stick to the left and he stops you from moving somewhere. It’s on the offensive guy to stop the guy from wiggling out. You have to keep an eye on where the defensive guy wants to go, but you also have to wait for your opportunity to advance.

Every submission is animated in five stages depending on what your attributes are. You may have to go through all five; you may have to go through only three depending on different scenarios. There are 29 different submissions in the game. Not every armbar looks the same depending on the position. We really wanted to make it something that you can see what’s going on and see who is winning as opposed to, “We’re going to do this and see what happens at the end depending on stats.”

What about knockouts? How did you create an effective knockout system where it actually feels like the player has earned a knockout finish opposed to landing a lucky shot for a flash knockout?
Physics some into play. There are collision marker in the hands, feet, knees and elbows. How clean does the strike land on the opponent? That determines how much damage it will do along with what the strike is, what the attributes are, what the striking fighters stamina level is, what the receiving fighters stamina level is – all those kind of things.

If I make you miss and counter back with a big right hand, that’s going to do a little bit more damage and create those openings. You could still theoretically have one of those things where you go stand in the middle of the ring and just tee of with no thought of defense, and sooner or later one guy will fall down, but we’re trying to encourage the idea that it’s always better keep your wits about you, make your opponent miss and make them pay.

I often find in previous UFC games that a knockout would happen and I would feel like I didn’t really do anything special to get a knockout in the first 30 seconds. We’re always trying to make it that if you’re going to see an early knockout, it’s more likely going to be because you created the opportunity for that to happen because you parried your opponent’s strike and countered back. There’s times where I would play UFC and got a knockout and feel like I didn’t deserve that. If you’re going to see something like that happen early in a fight it’s because you know the game and you’re a skilled player who is capable of accomplishing that.

How did you create a system for judging? Poor judging and bad decisions are very much a reality in MMA, so does that aspect carry over to the game or is the popular phrase, “Don’t leave it in the hands of the judges” less of a concern than real life?
Basically we use the same logic you would normally score a normal bout on and also go off fight statistics. For example, in the real world when they’re judging effective striking, we actually mathematically know what the most effective strikes are. We know exactly who landed the most effective strikes. We know exactly down to millisecond who had the most dominant position for the most time. Obviously submission attempts and all that stuff factor into it as well. The last thing we would want to happen is for you to rage quit and break your console because of a decision. There is some variance, but there’s nothing that should be super horrible. There might be judges who favor grappling more than striking or striking more than grappling, but there’s nothing where you should clearly win a round and the judge will give it to the other guy.

Finally, When can fans expect “EA SPORTS UFC” to be available for purchase on their Xbox One or PS4?
We don’t have a fully signed and official release date. We’ve been saying Spring 2014. It was always going to be late, late spring. But that was the plan. We could say spring or we could say summer. We’ve just really been focused on driving for quality. We want this game to be great, so we don’t want to rush it.

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